A great review of Joanna Ruocco's Man’s Companions (Tarpaulin Sky, 2010) and The Mothering Coven (Ellipsis Press, 2009) in the newest issue of The Nation.
Read the full article at: http://www.thenation.com/article/158975/wrinkles-time-joanna-ruoccoOne of [The Mothering Coven]’s first descriptive passages, which concerns the witches’ next-door neighbor, presents an image of a lettuce heart as a model of the universe:
Mr. Henderson takes the lettuce heart. He had always thought the physical universe had no shape at all, just a multi-directional nothingness with deep space objects floating around at varying speeds. He realizes that he has been ridiculous. All these dark folded places, opening everywhere at once—of course, that’s what the physical universe looks like.
“Opening everywhere at once” is a good description of The Mothering Coven, which navigates the many, fantastical realities that crowd within the illusory unity of our universe... The novel encompasses a multitude of worlds, its concision no obstacle to its holding capacity, since the latter depends not on mere size but on an endless series of folds, which language is no less capable of creating than is vegetation.
...Ruocco’s coven is a counterproposal to language as a homogenizing force—to words that would flatten out the leaves of the lettuce heart or chop them into uniform, bite-size pieces. Ruocco’s feat is to show how esoteric vocabularies unfold hidden pockets of experience.
Pick up a copy today!
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